Creating A Situational Awareness Dashboard:
Fire Season
The first step in creating a situational awareness dashboard is knowing what to include and how to interpret the data. This guide can serve as a roadmap for you to begin to discover what types of resources are available and may be relevant to you.
Always heed the warnings and advice of your local Agency Having Jurisdiction (AHJ), they are the true experts! If you feel you are in harm's way, immediately call 911 and follow the instructions provided by your local authorities. Always listen to and follow instructions from your local authorities for critical life safety information. Follow all evacuation warnings and orders issued by your local, state, or federal agencies.
The information provided here is not to be used for making life safety decisions. The links and resources provided here are posted to give you an idea of what types of local resources you may want to seek out. These resources are not an exhaustive list nor may they be appropriate for all disasters or locations, and they may not be available to you during an emergency. WaveTalkers makes no claims, warranties, assumptions, or any of that legalese jargon that any of these resources will be available, current, or accurate during an emergency. WaveTalkers is not affiliated with, supported by, or in any way associated with these sites. All links and information here are provided as a courtesy for our viewers to begin their own journey into creating their own Situational Awareness Dashboard.
Keeping your finger on the pulse of a rapidly changing emergency can help to raise your level of situational awareness. Learning to seek out primary sources of information provided by the AHJ and learning to listen to the types of information they distribute can greatly aid you in understanding what they are saying and following their directions.
Creating your own Situational Awareness Dashboard for Fire Season can be as simple as navigating to the most appropriate sites for your area of interest and then bookmarking the relevant pages in your browser. Making these links well ahead of a disaster can help you become familiar with official sites and how critical information is displayed. If you have basic HTML skills, you can create a dedicated web page that links to the resources you find most helpful. For mobile users, download the app if one exists, or navigate to the website and save the relevant URL as an icon on your device's home screen. Organize these apps and links into a folder for quick access.
Simple Steps to Situational Awareness during Fire Season
See links and Example pages below.
- Be Prepared before a fire begins.
- Close monitor the weather, especially red flag warnings, excessive heat, and wind.
- During high risk times, turn on the radio and monitor local fire and ems channels.
- Do your part to help others.
Resource Links
US Resources
Family Emergency Preparedness Sites
Communications and radio are NOT the most important things to focus on in terms of wildfires. Preparation for a fire is. Check with your local Office of Emergency Management, EMS, Fire, or other appropriate agency to find out if your community has sites like these.
- Ready for Wild Fire in California
Wild Fires won't wait, prepare now. This resource by the State of California is an excellent resource to help you Get Read, Get Set, and Go when the time comes.
- VC Emergency
A local incident information site for Ventura County, California. Citizens of Ventura County cand find relevent offial information related to incidents in the county.
- VC Alert
An emergency notification system used in Ventura County California where citizens can sign up to have critical alerts and notificaitons sent directly to their mobile devices in the event of an emergency.
- Ready Ventura County
A family preparedness site for citizens of Ventura County, California.
- Ready California
Official California family preparedness site.
- Ready.gov
Official United States family preparedness site.
Fire Weather and Wind
Monitoring the weather is absolutly critical. Red Flag Warnings, Extreme Head, and Wind are some of the most critical things to monitor.
- National Weather Service
Keep an eye on the weather. The best weather site is WEATHER.GOV -- you pay for this if you are a US taxpayer. All the other apps and services use the data from WEATHER.GOV (NOAA, NWS, etc.) as the basis of their forecasts.
- National Weather Service: Fire Weather Snooper
NWS resource to that identifies weather monitoring stations that have become Red Flag Warning locations, are flirting with becoming a Red Flag location, and accurate local wind data reports from very localized weather stations.
- National Weather Service: Fire Weather
National Weather Service Page dedicated to Fire Weather Information.
- National Weather Service: Fire Weather Dashboard
Localized Fire Weather Dashboard page created by NWS that you can drill into for the most localized weather information for your local area.
Use the map to zoom into your location of interest. As you zoom in, relevent fire weather data tables for the selected area will appear below the map. Once you are fully zoomed in, bookmark the page to quickly navigate back to your target area.
- PurpleAir
Near realtime airquality tracking using a network of user purchasable Air Quality sensors, also available from PurpleAir.
Fire & Incident Tracking (near real time)
- Pulse Point – Mobile App
Pulsepoint ties into many local EMS and Fire dispatch centers to provide you will a quick alerts, call mapping, and live audio feeds. You can create alerts for specific types of calls and get alerts on your mobile device or smart watch. Extremely helpful app if your local agencies connect with PulsePoint.
- Watch Duty
Watch Duty is a non-profit, non-partisan, and non-government organization focused on disseminating public safety information in real-time from verified sources. Our service is powered by real people – active and retired firefighters, dispatchers, and first responders (not crowdsourced) – who diligently monitor radio scanners and collaborate around the clock to bring you up-to-the-minute life saving information. Our reporters undergo extensive training as well as background checks before joining our elite team.
See Watch Duty example below.
- Broadcastify
Listen to live radio stations. Select the Browse Feeds menu option. Use the map to navigate to your local area area of interest. Then select the live feed you would like to listen to. For example: this is the feed for Ventura County Fire Dispatch
- Alert California – Live Fire Cams
Alert California Ops page shows you a network of live wildland web cameras that can be accessed through your web browser. The map has arrows that show the location and direction of each camera in the network. A side bar shows you the nearest live cameras to your current locacation. Example below.
Hover your cursor over the camera direction arrow on the map to reveal the view angle for that camera. Click on camera direction arrow and you can access a more detailed view page for that camera.
Use the polygon tool to select a custom region of 100 cameras or less. The page will automatically refresh when you close the polygon and display the selected cameras. Example below. Bookmark this page to quickly access the relevent cameras in your area.
- Alert Oregon – Live Fire Cams
Alert Oregon is a site similar to Alert Califronia noted aboove.
- Geographic Area Coordination Center GACC
GACG's mission is to provide leadership and support not only for wildland fire emergencies, but to other emergency incidents (i.e. earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc), as necessary. The primary mission of the GACC is to serve Federal and State wildland fire agencies through logistical coordination and mobilization of resources (people, aircraft, ground equipment) throughout the geographical area, and with other geographic areas, as necessary.
- FIRMS US/Canada
Fire Information for Resource Management System US/Canada (FIRMS) is a data rich visually mapping system. This site if NOT real time data and should not be used to make life safety decisions. The site defauts to a Basic View that maps major fires across the US and Canada. Additional data layers can be enabled from the sidebar including some recent satellite image overlays.
In the top of the sidebar, click the hamburger menu (3 lines) and change from Basic to additional Modes. These modes provide
International Resources
- Ready for Wildfire
A resource put together by VK2MB in Australia. Strong Work!
